Perseverance

Just south of the U.S. border, migrants duck for cover as
a Border Patrol Black Hawk helicopter hovers up ahead. Two gallons
of water will last about a day in the heat they will endure on
their journey north.

JT Thomas

Carlos Alvarez and his traveling companion stand outside
the Super Coyote market in Sasabe, one of the primary launching
points for migrants attempting to cross the U.S. border.

JT Thomas

Twenty-two hopeful border crossers cram into a van for the
65-mile ride over bumpy roads from Altar to Sasabe, both in the
Mexican state of Sonora. Thousands of people make a similar trip
each day in the spring.

An immigrant’s journey: Dust, flies, and the long walk

ALTAR, Sonora — First comes the dust. Then the flies. Then, a 150-mile walk through the Arizona desert.

Carlos Alvarez, a 27-year-old from the state of Nayarit, knows it all intimately. He was here three years ago, standing in this same church plaza under the watchful eyes of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, waiting for the van that would take him north to the border.

The blisters are the worst, appearing after the first day’s walk, he says. The cactus spines are almost as bad; he’ll be pulling them out of his skin for a week after he arrives in Phoenix.

His ambitions are not too different from those of most American men his age: Work for a while, save some money, build a house back home, get his wife, Guadalupe, pregnant again.

The sick squeal of brakes jerks him from his reverie as yet another bus pulls up on Highway 2. The doors open with a shudder and a loud hiss. A group of men climbs off, all dressed in the border-crosser’s uniform: dark sweatshirt, jeans, new shoes, baseball caps and backpacks. They walk with the same distinctive shuffle, heads down, eyes to the ground.

Alvarez and all the rest gathered here in the church courtyard will soon join the steady stream of northbound travelers. It is a migration driven by forces much stronger than instinct. Some 4,000 journey to the border town of Sasabe each day, according to Grupo Beta, a Mexican government migrant-protection group. Some of them will make it across the border on their first try. Others will fall into the hands of the Border Patrol — more than 200,000 were caught in the last six months. They will be handcuffed, put into vans, and ferried back across the border, only to try again and again — sometimes as many as 30 times.

The lucky ones will end up as landscapers in Tucson, meatpackers in Greeley, construction workers in Salt Lake City, or fruit pickers in Washington state. The less fortunate, and those who don’t make it past the fences, motion detectors, and Border Patrol, may give up and go back home to their families, to jobs that pay as little as $6 per day.

Then there are those who are swallowed up by the desert: Last year in Arizona, more than 200 people died of heat and thirst. Nobody knows how many more bodies are out there, undiscovered. On this April day, as Alvarez waits for the van, the temperature is comfortably warm, 87 degrees. But by mid-May, the mercury will climb well past 100, baking the rocky desert floor to 140 degrees or more.

Two gallons of water lasts scarcely a day in the desert. After half a day without water, the heat takes over. Suffering migrants have been known to hang themselves from tree branches. Sometimes, the dying tear cacti apart in a frenzied search for water. Sometimes, they rip their clothes off, or rub their hands bloody, clawing into the desert floor, trying to escape the terrible heat.

A flock of pigeons suddenly bursts from the roof of the church, startling Alvarez and his traveling companions, Manuel and José. They watch the birds for a moment, then walk silently to a wooden shack, where they buy styrofoam cups full of steaming instant coffee for five pesos. As they sip it, the van arrives. It will cost them 100 pesos, or about $9.50, for the 65-mile ride to Sasabe, within sight of the border. It’s worth it, to them.

Coyotes

A cloud of dust rises slowly into the air behind the van as it rolls north on a bumpy dirt road. Twenty-two people — mostly men, with a few women and two small children — are crowded inside on long steel benches bolted in sideways in place of car seats. A green plastic milk crate between the two front seats forms a perch for one more. Outside, barely visible through the dust, more loaded vans follow; meanwhile, empty ones pass by heading south, on their way to pick up another load.

The economy of Mexico is piss-poor these days, but the smuggling business is booming. A vast network of human smugglers, known as coyotes, has flourished. Equipped with fleets of vans, cell phones, and border observation posts, the operatives spread across northern Mexico and into the United States. The more difficult it becomes to cross the border, the more the coyotes can charge to deliver the pollos, or chickens, to their American destinations.

Alvarez’s mother-in-law, waiting for him in Phoenix, paid a typical fee of $1,500 for him to cross this time. Assuming the passengers are all Mexicans, this vanload of pollos is worth well over $30,000. Central Americans — who first must cross illegally into Mexico before they even get a chance at the U.S. — pay about $5,000 each, while Asians can pay as much as $50,000. With thousands of people crossing every day, the profits would make any CEO drool.